People’s Movement for the Protection of Environment

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People’s Movement for the Protection of Environment!

It is often questioned whether there is an environmental movement in India for the protection of environment. If the question is required to be answered in precise words it could be said that there is no such movement in the country.

The fact of the matter is that ours is a vast country which is divided by cultural regions, castes and languages. We very often forget that these ethnic influences also affect environ­mental politics. Darryl D’ Monte has ventured to answer the question whether we have a movement for the protection of environment.

He says:

Paradoxically, there is no movement of the western variety, but there is certainly a coalition made up of scores of small, grassroot organisations located throughout the length and breadth of the country. To­gether, these constitute the environmental movement, leading credence to the cliched dogma, ‘unity in diversity’.

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The strange truth is that even if there is no dialogue between different strange there is still the tangled skein which is a distinct entity within the socio-political structure of the nation. This makes the environmental movement in India rather different from that in most other countries of the world.

What D’ Monte argues is that we do not have an environment movement in India of the variety of Germany and other countries. On the other hand, what is particular about India is that we have an environment movement at the local level or at the village level characterised by parochial ethnicity. The love for environment, trees and wild animals which the Bishnoi caste of Jodhpur (Rajasthan) has, is ab­sent in other parts of Rajasthan and elsewhere in the country.

One can list some of the prominent movements related to the protection of environment at national level. Undoubtedly, the forest resource is a central issue in Indian context. Prior to the advent of British rule, communities themselves exercised some minimal restric­tions on the use of forests. But the collection of what foresters term ‘minor forest produce’ i.e., twigs, berries, fruit and so on, was not regulated because the forests extended over such a large area that there was no need for control.

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However, it was the British who introduced the first laws, ostensibly in the public benefit, but with the sole pur­pose of commercial exploitation of this resource. Possibly, the first environmental movements in India, therefore, were protests against the limited entry into forests; historical records show that these took place in areas as far apart as Garhwal and Chhotanagpur. In the latter case tribals in the forested belt of Bihar launched the Santhal rebellions, the precursor of today’s more ‘bourgeois’ Jharkhand movement.

In contemporary India, the environment movement has taken an entirely different direction. The Chipko organisation which got all the ground in 1973 owes its inspiration to Gandhian passive resistance principles: to prevent contractors from felling trees, women hugged the trunks.

From those beginnings the Chipko movement is prob­ably the best known example of grassroots’ protest against environmental destruction in world it has branched out into a much broader tendency, which looks at the basic causes of resource degrada­tion poverty and unemployment. This is why it advocates prohibition of liquor as well.

The Chipko movement was led by Sundarlal Bahuguna. The movement caught the imagination of the villagers in other parts of the country. In Karnataka, it is known as ‘Appiko’. Here, the people fight against the plantation of eucalyptus.

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Apart from its adverse ecological repercussions eucalyptus has no social value; it can neither be used as fodder nor as fuel wood since it finds a ready market as pulp for the rayon and paper industries. In Karnataka, there is also another move­ment waged against Harihar Polyfibres, a Birla company, which has obtained permission to setup a joint venture with state government to plant eucalyptus trees.

Besides forests, there is yet another area where environment movement has taken its roots. It is the mining. The Jharkhand move­ment of Bihar, which stands for the demand of autonomy, has also a movement against mining.

The mining of limestone is opposed by the tribals because it poses a threat to the whole hill region. Women in Garhwal are also concerned about open-caste mining for soap stone and other minerals in a highly sensitive ecosystem.

There have also been protest movements against the construction of big dams. The Tehri Garhwal and Sardar Sarovar dams have con­tinuously been opposed by the environmentalists. It is argued that big dams are against the interests of the protection of environment. Megha Patkar is the leading figure to oppose the construction of big dams.